The proposed Champlain Parkway, at top left (south), joins Pine Street at Lakeside Avenue, as shown in this 2012 draft map of the project. A recent settlement grants a permanent easement between the Innovation Center parking lot (top right) to Pine Street.
(Photo:
Courtesy City of Burlington
)

Despite a recent agreement between Burlington and private developers that would hasten the construction of Burlington’s Champlain Parkway, the decades-old project remains in Environmental Court.

The sticking point: the Vermont Agency of Transportation hasn’t agreed on the proposed settlement, Carl Lisman, the attorney representing the owners of the Innovation Center of Vermont, told the Burlington Free Press.

Dan Dutcher, the attorney representing Vtrans, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday morning.

City Council approved a tentative settlement with private developers Fortieth Burlington LLC on Monday night designed to ease traffic from Interstate 189 to downtown.

The settlement would award a permanent easement between the large parking lot behind Innovation Center of Vermont at the old Queen City Cotton Mill (most commonly known as the former General Dynamics building) and Pine Street.

Concerns over traffic patterns at Lakeside Avenue and Pine Street prompted Fortieth Burlington’s appeal of the project’s Act 250 permit in May 2012.

The City Council’s vote signaled the possibility of a breakthrough.

“This is the last possible lawsuit in the way of construction,” Councilor Karen Paul, I-Ward 6, said Tuesday. “After stormwater and rights-of-ways issues are resolved, we could begin building within a year or so.”

The settlement also calls for a more through analysis of traffic patterns around the Innovation Center, including the possibility of a re-alignment of the access road (“North Road”) with Locust Street, and a new, signalized intersection.

When Fortieth Burlington first filed its appeal, Charles M. Bayer Jr., a principal with the firm, told the Burlington Free Press that his company’s traffic studies contradicted those conducted by the city, which had predicted free-flowing traffic.

“Cars are forecast to back up thru the intersections and wrap around up and down Pine Street for thousands of feet on the day the Parkway opens,” Bayer said then. “This is a growth area for the city.”

His firm’s appeal had been scheduled for a merits hearing at Vermont Environmental Court this week, beginning at 9 a.m. on Tuesday.

Burlington settled two other appeals of the project last fall.

Allen Hunt, a Maple Street resident, had objected to the impact traffic might have on a historic and largely low-income neighborhood. Upgrades to the plan’s pedestrian access resulted.

Vermont Railway had contested some of the parkway’s rights-of-way across some of the area’s older rail spurs.

Contact Joel Banner Baird at 660-1843 or joelbaird@FreePressMedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/vtgoingup

Parkway timeline

The Champlain Parkway — a proposed traffic artery that would join Pine Street into southern Burlington — has repeatedly met challenges with compromise.

Among the Parkway’s highlights:

•
Back in the freer-spending early 1960s, a through-way (the “Burlington Beltline”) was proposed along the city’s western edge — one that would zip motorists north from Interstate 189 in South Burlington to the Circ Highway (Vermont 289) in Colchester, and loop them back to Interstate 89 at Williston.

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By the early 1970s, economic and environmental constraints result in a scaled-back “Southern Connector” that would follow Pine Street north from I-189, and then veer west to join the southern end of Battery Street.

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Environmental concerns heighten in the late 1970s with a more detailed appreciation for the pollution of wetlands around the Pine Street Barge Canal. Construction within the new Superfund site is ultimately deemed unsafe.

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Throughout the 1980s, the city mulls alternative routes. Lakeside Avenue and Pine Street emerges as the most suitable conduits for traffic heading downtown.

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As planning continued in the 1990s, newer versions of the road, which would travel through residential areas, become known as the “Champlain Parkway.”

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At the turn of the 21st century, designs for downtown sections of the Parkway show the number of lanes reduced from four to two. Burlington’s downtown — specifically, Main Street — designated as the roadway’s terminus.

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April 27, 2012, the District 4 Environmental Commission grants Act 250 approval to the project, with the exception of stormwater permits. Within a month, four legal challenges had been filed.

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A spur route, through portions of the railyard to Battery Street, is currently being explored in conjunction with a separate redevelopment project in that area.